Anne Coghlan is the co-founder of Scope3, a software firm providing sustainability insights on supply chains.
In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, Coghlan discusses why founders be “eternally curious” and never stop learning, why being transparent with your team is essential and why positive outcomes for the planet don’t have to be negative outcomes for business.
What advice would you give to a first-time founder?
“Founding your own business brings a lot of highs, but as I’m sure every founder can attest to, there’s plenty of challenging moments too. In these crunch points, it’s so important to be on the same page as your fellow founding team. Know their strengths, and their weaknesses, and understand how you best complement each other to work through obstacles together.
Brian O’Kelley, Mike Freyberger and I lead Scope3 remotely from opposite sides of the pond, but we constantly communicate and workshop growth challenges together. This not only addresses the problem faster, but means we are always in-sync on where the business is heading.”
How do you motivate your team?
“From the very first day we started Scope3, we made a commitment to be honest and transparent with the whole organisation. We fundamentally believe that if you share early, and consistently, it empowers your teams to understand the business vision, and shows that they play a critical role in shaping its future. It also encourages our teams to share their ideas and trust in your leadership – as they know we are bringing them on the journey with us.”
Do you have a productivity hack?
“Be eternally curious. If you are hitting a roadblock on product development, sales strategy or commercial goals, immerse yourself in the latest technologies, like AI, and master the tools you use, so you can do everything faster. Similarly, mine the expertise within your team for insights and experience.
“When briefing my team, I find that drawing pictures can make a huge difference. If you can’t sketch it, then it shows you aren’t clear on what you’re asking your team to achieve. It forces you to simplify your communication and it helps to bring your teams up to speed faster.”
Excluding your sector, which nascent technology holds the most promise?
“AI is ready to throw a grenade into every existing business process across all sectors. Over the last couple of years, we’ve witnessed the pace and scale of change, from Gen AI to Explainable AI and now Agentic AI.
It holds so much promise for business transformation, but we could easily see it fall short of the mark if it’s not managed and implemented correctly. If it simply sits atop legacy functions, it’ll only ever make incremental improvements. It needs to be used to rearchitect wholesale change to drive safe and sustainable business growth.”
What’s the most misunderstood technology?
“In advertising, there’s a view that technology which drives positive outcomes for the planet comes at the expense of business performance.
But this simply isn’t true. Carbon measurement has become a bellwether for business efficiency and sustainable growth. In making the media supply chain more efficient and effective, advertisers can boost performance, save money and establish more environmental practices. It’s a win-win scenario that supports growth and reduces waste.”
Founder in Five – a UKTN Q&A series with the entrepreneurs behind the UK’s innovative tech startups, scaleups and unicorns – is published every Friday.
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